Читать книгу Be Careful What You Wish For - Martina Devlin - Страница 10

Molly had contemplated (a) a day at one of those health farms where they guarantee chip-pans of fat reduction or, preferably, (b) a body transplant before meeting Fionn, but there wasn’t time for either. Instead she bought a new shampoo – an inadequate substitute but then life can be an inadequate substitute, for that matter. She also purchased a breath freshener and had almost used up the spray before she walked into Bewley’s, eyes searching for an ordinary-looking man of thirty-three who wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. Not half.

As soon as he smiled at her everyone else evaporated into obscurity. She was pathetic; she’d swear someone was playing a violin. Snap out of it, it’s not as though this is a date with Hercules. It’s coffee with an ex. A former lover who’s now exactly the right age to be crucified. Which he deserved to be for his treatment of her. Maybe that was extreme; a simple crowning with thorns might suffice.

After a few minutes in his company Fionn seemed maybe not her saviour but definitely not her tormentor. The familiarity was the deceptive part as they sat opposite one another, catching up on four years’ worth of news. It lulled her into a false sense of security; she had to keep reminding herself this man had chipped at the corners of her heart. If that organ was lopsided now it was because of him.

But Molly was charmed, all the same, to discover they still shared the same sense of humour as they automatically began sparring with each other. There was also something intriguingly different about him. She assessed Fionn as he chatted: the trademark arrogance appeared dented, but he was changed in other ways too, she was uncertain specifically how.

Molly didn’t mention his wife, waiting for him to bite the bullet, but he showed remarkably little interest in grasping nettles or seizing bulls by the horns or … For God’s sake, woman, repeat after me: bullets, nettles and bulls’ horns have nothing to do with this date. Meeting. Old friends meeting. It wasn’t a date.

She decided she’d have to raise the subject of his wife herself. She’d do it discreetly, lend him the opportunity to disclose as much or as little of the marriage collapse as he chose.

‘So, Fionn, Helga turned wise to your wicked ways and dumped you. Was it your pathological aversion to washing or did she read the psychiatric report?’

‘I think it was the phone call from the Vatican telling her she was giving shelter to a defrocked priest that did the trick.’

‘I didn’t think you could defrock priests; I thought the Catholic Church was stuck with them for life,’ objected Molly.

‘You’re right, I’m not a defrocked priest. I’m still entitled to practise all the sacraments including hearing confession. So if there’s anything you feel the need to get off your chest, my child …’

‘Your confession would be streets ahead of mine in terms of audience ratings. However, if you’re too ashamed to admit your life is a failure and the most important relationship you embarked on went belly up, who am I to compel you? Confession is only good for the soul if you have a soul. Obviously that rules you out, McCullagh.’

He laughed, caught her eye and reached out to cover her hand with his.

‘You’re wrong, you know.’ Fionn pitched his voice so low she had to lean across the table to catch his words.

‘You’re claiming to have a soul after all?’

‘No, Helga, I mean Olga, wasn’t the most important relationship I had. That was the time I spent with you.’

It was one of those freeze-frame moments. Molly’s hand curled around his, she opened her mouth to speak – and then she saw him. Hercules. Reflected in the mirror at a table just along from them. She turned her head, checked down the row for confirmation and sure enough, it was her Greek. Except he appeared to be someone else’s Greek judging from the proprietorial way a sultry young woman was rearranging his jacket collar.

Fionn followed her line of vision. ‘Someone you know?’

‘Yes. No. Sort of.’

‘That’s as clear as mud. Would you like to join them?’

‘No, they look fairly content in each other’s company. I don’t care to intrude.’ Her eyes lingered on Hercules, engaged in such an intense conversation with the woman he appeared to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Of course that would make him Atlas, not Hercules.

‘Penny for them.’ Fionn interrupted her meandering brainwaves.

With an effort Molly refocused her attention, steeling herself not to watch Hercules in the mirror. ‘You have been away a long time; a penny wouldn’t buy you much. Whereas in the days when you lived here you could have snapped up a house in Dublin 4 for that.’

‘Even Cromwell couldn’t have snapped up a house in D4 for a penny, Molly.’

‘True. He’d have taken it for free. No point in being a conqueror if you turn all law-abiding afterwards.’

When Molly glanced again, Hercules was gone. But it was time for her to leave too. She was due into the office at 4.30 p.m., so she gathered up her belongings and prepared to make tracks.

‘I never did recite my confession,’ said Fionn. ‘Can I see you again? I’m still working up to the great unburdening.’

‘Must be a whopper. Of a lie or a confession.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Won’t finish until twelve thirty – bit late in the day for gallivanting. But I’m off tomorrow.’

‘I’ll drop by your place in Portobello and whisk you away for a pub lunch,’ he offered.

‘You see, you’ve been gone for centuries, Fionn McCullagh. I’m out in Blackrock now. I submitted to the responsibilities of adulthood two years ago and bought an apartment. One of these days I may even manage to buy some decent furniture for it.’

‘Blackrock with the indecent furniture it is then.’

‘No!’ She rejected his offer with sudden vehemence, then hastily amended her refusal. ‘I mean, somewhere other than Blackrock would make a change.’

‘How about if I borrow my father’s car and we drive into the Dublin mountains? I missed those fellows in Seattle. We could call into Glendalough if you like,’ Fionn suggested

‘Fine. I’ll meet you in front of the DART station at midday.’

‘I can collect you from your apartment, Molly. I wouldn’t want you loitering around street corners in this weather.’

‘The station would suit me better. It’s only a few minutes’ walk and I, um, I can drop off my dry-cleaning on the way. Besides, if you don’t want me skulking on street corners there’s simple enough solution – don’t be late. See you tomorrow.’

For a moment Fionn looked as if he were about to kiss her but Molly stepped backwards so quickly he didn’t have a chance. That was a kneejerk reaction too. What was wrong with her? A kiss wouldn’t have triggered the end of the world. But her assiduously reconstructed universe wasn’t ready for a peck on the cheek from Fionn McCullagh.

Just shy of midday, as she hacked at the tangles in her hair, Molly still wasn’t lucid on why she’d circumvented his kiss. He seemed to be aiming at her cheek – there was no harm in that. Social kisses were simply sociable. She occasionally allowed men she couldn’t bear the sight of to kiss her cheek (the tyranny of manners), never mind someone she once imagined spending her life with – growing old holding hands with him. Molly marvelled at elderly couples she saw ambling hand in hand along the street: was it habit, was it affection, was it affectionate habit? They couldn’t all be foreigners; some of them had to be Irish. Imagine your arthritic hands clasping someone else’s arthritic hands and the touch sustaining you. She wasn’t inclined towards wallowing but when she indulged in the rare one, say if she were confined to bed with flu, she sniffled at the thought of being wrinkled and unloved. Heck, she was already wrinkled and unloved at thirty-two. She longed to believe there was someone out there who’d take her gnarled eighty-year-old hand and make her feel cherished. It wasn’t going to be Fionn McCullagh, that much was cast in stone. Even with his melodramatic regrets. Second chances were so second-rate.

Her buzzer sounded as she laced on boots. Must be the postman with a package.

‘Molly? I see you’ve grown no more punctual since I knew you before.’

Fionn was standing on her doorstep – specifically hers and twenty-three others – and she hadn’t even applied her lipstick. Courtesy demanded that she buzz him up.

‘Stay where you are, I’ll be straight down,’ she instructed him. Courtesy could take a running jump. And since when did ten minutes late count as being late? Anyway, it was his fault she wasn’t there on time, confusing her by parachuting into her life again. She addressed a running commentary to the mirror. ‘Where’s my lickstick? Feck it, I can’t even say it right – he has me all fingers and tongues.’ She dropped the silver tube into the wash-hand basin.

‘Thumbs, thumbs,’ she screeched at her reflection. ‘No tongues.’

Now, deep breaths and slick it on; Molly wasn’t letting him see her without a painted pout. No point in giving him cause to believe he’d had a lucky escape from her. Despair at a life wasted because it wasn’t spent in her embrace, that’s what she’d prefer to inculcate in Fionn McCullagh. If she could just draw her Cupid’s bow straight she could let those arrows fly.

Fionn was reading the notice board when she emerged from the stairwell. Something about the hot water being shut off for a day while electrical repairs were effected had him riveted. When he turned she was struck, as she had been yesterday, by the way his American tan turned his eyes to the colour of the ocean at Mullaghmore on a summer’s day. His eyes had slid off hers on that Thursday evening when he’d told her he had a brand-new wife. Scarcely out of her packaging. So instead of reading the reason for his defection in his eyes she’d concentrated on his mouth as it opened and shut, the lips coiling around words she couldn’t believe she was hearing. His mouth had betrayed his nervousness, the tongue flicking across to moisten it after each poisonous parcel of words plopped out. As he’d spoken she noticed a crumb clinging to the left side of the slit, not far from where a dimple would indent if he smiled. But he hadn’t been smiling that day four years ago. Nor had she.

‘Are you fit?’ Fionn was smiling now.

Molly wasn’t. He needn’t imagine she’d be a pushover. ‘Fit? Not yet but it’s my New Year’s resolution. I’m only a month late starting.’

‘I meant are you ready – but feel at liberty to run through your New Year’s resolutions, Molly.’

‘Well, there’s getting fit, solving global conflict, developing a machine that turns base metal into gold and repairing the hole in the ozone layer. I thought that might keep me occupied until summer and then I could reassess. How about yourself?’

‘I didn’t consciously make one but I suppose it would be to put my house in order.’ Fionn looked sombre.

Molly panicked. It was too early for self-analysis – she’d like something in a glass to put hairs on her chest first, the depilatory cream could eradicate the damage later – so she started jabbering, ‘Housework. Strangely enough I left that one off the list. Anyway, I thought we were supposed to meet at the station. I’m not that late. And how did you know my address? I don’t remember giving it to you.’

‘Spadework. You dropped clues about being a few minutes from the DART and passing a dry-cleaner’s to reach it. So I continued driving past the station and this is the first apartment block I reached. Your name is above the bell.’

‘You’re wasted in architecture. You should have been a taxman,’ she muttered sourly. ‘Mustn’t keep the great outdoors waiting; after you, super-sleuth.’ And she held the door open for Fionn to wrongfoot him because he liked to be the one doling out gentlemanly gestures.

They parked near the entrance to Glendalough and managed a fifteen-minute stroll along a country lane before sleet sent them scurrying to the car.

‘At least we’ve earned our hot whiskeys now.’ Fionn drove the short distance down the mountain to a pub in Laragh. ‘You didn’t want to stay up there for a wander inside Glendalough, did you, admire a few ancient monuments, glory in our cultural heritage?’

‘I wasn’t tempted before the sleet came lashing and I’m even less disposed now. A hot whiskey sounds infinitely more promising. Anyway, we mustn’t be purist about cultural heritage. Whiskey’s just as much a part of it as monastic ruins.’

A coach party of Swiss senior citizens, a pile of sodden raincoats at their feet, were immersed in an alcohol-free lunch at two trestle tables towards the rear of the pub. But a cushion-jammed bench alongside the inglenook fireplace was vacant and Molly and Fionn commandeered it.

‘Those monks had funny-peculiar attitudes anyway,’ remarked Molly, apropos of nothing. ‘Especially where women were concerned. Your medieval aesthetics viewed us as she-devils. Of course, that’s just because they were scared witless of the other sex and in complete denial of their bodily urges.’

Fionn nodded. ‘Denial of bodily urges is unhealthy – that’s always been my credo.’

Molly frowned. ‘On the other hand, gratifying all your inclinations is probably not advisable either. There has to be something to separate us from the beasts.’ Fionn was excessively complacent. He needn’t imagine a couple of hot whiskeys would generate any body heat from her. Just because their sex life had been sensational … Molly’s hand flew to her mouth. Where had that sprung from? It was years since she’d allowed herself to dwell on their times in bed – and on the living-room rug and in the shower and on the beach at Mullaghmore that night when she’d admitted it had always been her ambition to make love beneath the stars. Only she’d anticipated a Caribbean sky rather than a low-lying Sligo one, but it had seemed churlish to mention it when he was co-operating so enthusiastically with making her wish come true.

‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Molly whispered.

‘What did you say?’ Fionn set down his glass and slid along the bench towards her.

Startled, because she hadn’t realised she’d spoken aloud, Molly improvised. ‘I was thinking about those monks. They were great ones for making rash vows and having to work around them, like St Columcille, who swore his feet would never touch Irish soil again after he stormed off to Iona. When he had to return he filled his boots with Scottish earth so they never did. Those fellows had plenty of mantras but they seemed not to extend to cleanliness is next to godliness.’

Molly noticed her fingernails weren’t exactly pious using that criterion and sat on her hands in case Fionn spotted them too. She continued: ‘But they were cunning enough to weasel their way out of definitive statements. Exactly like my first newspaper editor who wrote a provocative column and always concluded with: “If anyone proves me wrong I’ll eat my Sunday bowler on the steps of the town hall.” He had a supply of chocolate hats on standby in case anyone ever called his bluff.’

Fionn scratched the back of his neck and Molly noticed how the hair curled around the collar of his rugby shirt.

‘Your conversations are deranged. Fascinating but demented,’ he said. ‘What have chocolate bowlers to do with medieval monks, or do all your stories feature chocolate? I haven’t forgotten you’re fixated on the stuff. Wasn’t it myself who introduced you to white Toblerone?’

Molly smiled at him properly for the first time. ‘I glimpsed Paradise, thanks to you,’ she breathed. ‘My gratitude is boundless. I’ll buy you a drink to prove it.’

‘That’s another advantage to not being a monk,’ said Fionn. ‘You have licence to sip hot whiskeys with a divine creature on a weekday. And she buys her round.’

Molly vacillated between being flattered and indignant. But she felt obliged to put him straight on the monastic life as she riffled through her handbag for her purse.

‘They didn’t have it so spartan,’ she said. ‘St Benedict wrote that a pint of wine a day was ample per monk. I think I could manage very nicely on a similar allocation.’

‘How come you’re such an expert on the monastic life?’

‘Newspapers make you instant experts on the oddest subjects. I wrote a feature last week on the history of winemaking for the drinks column. Lucky for you that you caught me while the information is still at the top of the pile in my brain. By next week it will have been evicted to make room for the mating habits of sea birds or a history of Jewish persecution.’

Waiting for the barman to boil the kettle, Molly tapped her teeth with a mixture of vexation and attraction. There was a spark between herself and Fionn, she couldn’t deny it. But sparks could cause blazes to burn houses down. He was still a married man. Just because he and Helga were on a lay-off didn’t mean he could do his laying elsewhere. She was quite sure that wasn’t what Helga had in mind. Then again, the Scandinavians had rampaged through Ireland fairly thoroughly in the first millennium – their American descendants didn’t need to swoop down and scoop up all the available men in the third. That Helga sounded a right one. Although in fairness, admitted Molly, folding and unfolding a twenty-pound note, Fionn was biased. And not stupid. He’d make zero headway if he said: ‘She cooked cabbage and bacon to titillate my tastebuds and bought camisoles to titillate my appetite, but it wasn’t enough because I’m a self-centred animal.’ She cast a glance back at Fionn. He hadn’t even mentioned Helga; she might as well no longer exist for him. This buck took out of sight out of mind so literally his lady was in danger of being airbrushed out of existence. He’d pulled the same stunt on her.

On their second drink apiece, thawed by the combination of flames and whiskey, Fionn mentioned his wife.

‘I can’t believe how uncomplicated life is without Olga.’

Although crippled with curiosity and convinced he owed her at least a teaser in the gossip stakes, Molly found herself veering away from the subject. There’ll be no more walking this day.’ She indicated the hailstones bouncing off the nearest window. ‘So much for today being the opener for spring.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says the calendar. It’s the first of February, St Bridget’s Day.’

‘People must have been hardier in those days,’ said Fionn. ‘Most people date it from the March twenty-first equinox.’

‘We’ve gone soft since St Bridget was around running craft workshops and showing the locals how to make rush crosses to sell to the tourists,’ agreed Molly.

‘Soft, now that’s not a word you could apply to Olga.’ Fionn looked woebegone.

Molly resigned herself to a deconstruction of the concept of marriage, as experienced by Fionn McCullagh. She preferred to believe in happily ever afters, even for people who swanned off to have their happily ever after with someone else instead of her. Four years ago she’d have climbed on a table and cheered if she could have gazed into a crystal ball and witnessed Fionn telling her his marriage was a mistake and she was the one he truly loved. But four years equals 48 months, equals more than 200 weeks equals – pause for calculation – nearly 1500 days. And she didn’t want to hear a melancholy story on a storm-lashed day – or any other day for that matter.

Molly had experienced a surfeit of sorrow during the months following his rejection, when she closed down everything but the essential life-support system, and trailed vacantly from one day to the next. Helen had been predictably solid and Barry had been a rock too, cajoling her out for drinks and listening to her whine about being finished with love. Finished off by love. Even as she’d said it a spark of common sense had stirred within her and she’d realised she was talking nonsense. But she’d formed the words anyway and allowed Barry to pat her awkwardly, clearly horrified at being the recipient of so much naked emotion but determined to be supportive.

Now Molly only half-listened to Fionn’s account of how two into one wouldn’t go, swirling the honey-coloured liquid around in her glass. She inhaled: hot whiskeys always reminded her of being ill as a little girl, when her mother would add a teaspoonful of whiskey to sugar and warm milk to cosset her. ‘Time to mollycoddle my girl,’ she’d say. Suddenly she was suffused with an urge to ring her mother for a chat; she hadn’t been home since Christmas and she missed her. No lover, no friend, was endowed with the capacity to envelop her in unconditional love the way her mother could. She’d go home to Derry at the weekend and take her to lunch somewhere smart where her mother would have the satisfaction of being scandalised by the prices.

Fionn was still talking, some drivel about Olga being so consumed by her job as an interior decorator that she sidelined their relationship, and Molly drained her glass. She must be wearing an appropriately sympathetic expression because he didn’t falter as he unburdened himself of his saga; not much of a page turner but he was mesmerised by it – and he knew the ending already. All those years as a junior reporter sitting through council meetings without nodding off from the undiluted tedium were paying dividends; he hadn’t spotted how deep into her zero-interest zone he was plodding.

‘So we decided we’d take a three-month break from each other. I’ve come home to see if I can find work here and Olga is considering whether she could live in Dublin.’

Molly was so rattled she tore the menu she’d been covertly studying with a view to ordering lunch. That was more or less the same arrangement he’d made with her. The man was utterly devoid of tact.

‘But I don’t anticipate us ever being reunited, Molly. Now that I’m away from Olga I’m able to see what an ill-matched couple we were. We have nothing in common. Being with you reminds me what it’s like to spend time in the company of someone you feel wholly at ease with. Sorry if I’m being precipitate here. I don’t want to presume anything on your part, you haven’t even told me if you’re involved with someone else. But just being with you, Molly –’ he allowed his eyes to mist over at this point. She thought about offering him a tissue for his snivelly cold but reluctantly vetoed the idea – ‘allows me to recognise how sterile my life has become. And I’ve missed Dublin. She’s grown up since I’ve been away and I want to check out all the adult bumps and curves the old girl has acquired.’ He ran his fingers through his hair so that it stood up in spikes, a gesture she remembered, although he was wearing the hair shorter now and – could it be, yes – she did believe it was thinning at the crown. The sight of Fionn’s scalp cheered her inordinately.

We should order something to eat, thought Molly, deciding it was a better idea to use her menu for that purpose rather than the one she’d been contemplating: slapping Fionn McCullagh on the back of his legs with it for vacating her life for four years, not so much as a postcard, then reappearing and assuming she was his for a brace of hot whiskeys.

‘I’m ravenous. Shall we see if they can rustle up some food?’ Her face was deliberately bland.

Fionn radiated disappointment at her studied non-reaction to his résumé of the marital minefield but he stepped up to the bar to order a spinach and blue cheese pasta and a shepherd’s pie, with chips to share, the latter suggested by him.

Molly was reminded of Helen’s joke: How do you know an Irishman fancies you? He offers to buy you chips. Helen would be so-o disapproving if she knew Molly were seeing Fionn again. She’d been a little too enthusiastic about wading into him when he and Molly split up. Make that split asunder, it conveyed a more accurate impression of their parting. Anyway, Helen always had reservations about Fionn’s charms so she wasn’t an honest broker. Molly lifted her empty glass. Closer inspection revealed that, yes, it was still empty.

Fionn, meanwhile, was trying to attract the barman’s attention – easier said than done with a coachload of indecisive Swiss punters. Molly used the hiatus to contemplate what she’d learned about him. Fionn was single-ish, available and no less attractive or entertaining than he had been four years ago when she thought their destinies were interwoven. So why wasn’t she twining her arms around him saying, ‘You poor dear, how you’ve suffered,’ and offering to soothe his woes away? Was it rancour because he’d once measured her, computed the statistics and discarded her? Or perhaps she’d outgrown him …

Molly regarded his rear view as he leaned on the counter, conversing with the barman, who’d discovered he wasn’t among the Swiss party and all but fallen on his neck in gratitude. He was easy on the eye, easy on the ear too when he wasn’t hammering on about Helga. Available men weren’t that common; she shouldn’t be profligate about discarding one until she was certain whether she wanted him or not. He gave every indication of wanting her, which was balm enough at the moment. If in doubt, hang on to a man – that seemed a sensible maxim.

When Fionn returned to their bench, the decision was taken. Molly treated him to a dazzling smile, gave her head a shake so the curls spiralled in every direction and allowed her leg to rest ever so slightly against his.

‘Lunchtime’s been and gone.’ He was apologetic. ‘All they have left are the day-long breakfasts so I ordered us two of those. You haven’t turned vegetarian in the last couple of years, have you? I wondered if you might, on account of asking for pasta.’

‘Only aspirationally,’ she replied. ‘I like the notion of it. All my veggie friends are shaped like carrot batons, even the ones fixated on chocolate, but I never have the willpower to reject a rasher when I see it nestling beside a fried egg on my plate. It seems so fastidious. I’ve never thought my body was a temple; I’d be more inclined to call it a supermarket if I had to put the name of a building to it. Crammed with an interesting mish-mash, nothing hallowed.’

‘Helga, I mean Olga, was vegan,’ said Fionn. ‘She didn’t like seeing me eat meat. She took all the good out of it. You’d have a nice pink lump of steak on your fork, poised to chew and savour, and she’d embark on a lecture about food additives.’ He reached his arm around the back of the settle so it was draped behind Molly.

She was dubious. ‘But the one time I saw Helga she struck me as your standard issue warrior queen, all huge and healthy and looking as though she gnawed raw meat for breakfast.’

‘No, she ate muesli, not shop-bought but blended to her own specification. I had to have muesli too, to humour her.’ Injury sluiced from Fionn.

Molly guffawed; his suffering demeanour intensified. ‘I’m sorry,’ she spluttered, ‘it’s just the thought of you spooning in the muesli, when the only cereals you’d allow into the flat when we lived together were Coco Pops, for the colour they turned the milk. It can only have been love.’

‘Affection soon withers when it’s reciprocated on a tough-love basis: “I’m doing this for your own good, hon.” She wanted to take control of every aspect of my life: diet, wardrobe, hobbies, even my dental treatment. Can you believe this, Molly, she sent me to her orthodontist to have him service my teeth? She said they were a disgrace and she was ashamed to be seen in public with me.’

‘They always looked fine to me,’ said Molly.

‘They were fine. By Irish standards. But American requirements are more exacting. So I was obliged to spend a fortune getting my overbite fixed –’ he chomped enamel for the purposes of demonstration – ‘and she still pleaded with me to smile without baring my teeth. I looked like a hirsute Mona Lisa. Without the frock, naturally.’

‘Although you’d have been wearing one of those if Helga had decided trousers were symbolic of male superiority.’ Mischief gleamed from Molly’s face.

Fionn’s eyebrows met and bristled. ‘That woman had more testosterone than me. It’s only now that I’m free of her I realise how controlling she was.’ Even his eyelashes were bristling at this stage. ‘And talk about law-abiding – if I so much as tried to jaywalk she threw a wobbler. Result: I’ll only cross when the little red man flashes up now.’

How did we work our way back to the subject of Helga? wondered Molly. This was becoming monotonous. Someone should explain to the man that women turned restless when the subject was other women. Fortunately their mixed grills arrived so Fionn’s substandard overbite was diverted into decimating Clonakilty black pudding.

On their way home, driving against the commuter traffic streaming out of Dublin, Molly considered asking him into her apartment. The day hadn’t been a washout despite the weather and Fionn McCullagh still interested her. But as they passed the off-licence she found herself craning to check if Hercules was on duty. She could always parade in there with Fionn, demonstrate how other men wanted to spend time in her company even if he couldn’t be bothered exchanging pleasantries, but she rejected the idea as petty. Nevertheless Molly said goodbye to Fionn with considerably less regret than she felt at abandoning the possibility of showing Hercules she was a sought-after woman.

Fionn was disappointed she didn’t invite him in. ‘I promise not to outstay my welcome,’ he wheedled.

Arrogant streak. One of his less alluring characteristics.

Molly planted a kiss on his ear. ‘You can’t do that if you aren’t in the apartment to begin with. I have work to finish off tonight, Fionn. I’ll call you in a few days.’

In fact she wanted to ring her mother and then flop on the floor cradling the TV remote control but she wasn’t going to tell him that. He’d probably suggest they sit in together and watch Coronation Street. But he wasn’t Tweedledee to her Tweedledum. Fionn McCullagh could play house with her when she chose and not a minute sooner. However she’d no intention of slinging out the baby with the bath water. Valentine’s Day was on the horizon and she was looking into the maws of her first 14 February since the age of fifteen without a love token.

Molly wasn’t about to scuttle her best chance of a bunch of roses and a soppy card. Let’s be honest, her only chance.